


Employee of the Month

by doylesmom



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Excessive Cursing, Gas Station AU, Gen, Modern AU, exhausted grad student Byleth is just So Tired, gas station beesechurger extra foot no lettuce, humor and hijinks abound, mild but well deserved character bashing, please don’t take this too seriously, tags will update as the story proceeds, that’s a thing now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-11-27 07:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20944415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doylesmom/pseuds/doylesmom
Summary: Boss Man [2:46 am]: Hello Byleth, this is Seteth. Have you decided on who you are nominating for employee of the month? Please let me know. Thanks, Seteth.Byleth looked at her calendar. Sure enough it was the 23rd. She let out a long, pained moan as she slammed her head back against the headrest. Fuck.





	1. The 23rd

**Author's Note:**

> I blame discord for this. Unbeta’d.

All that Byleth wanted was a single normal day. Just one. She was sure that wasn’t a lot to ask for, relatively speaking. She could be asking for, say, to win the lottery, or to get her thesis finally finished, or hell even something as stupidly unreasonable as a good hair day. But no. All she wanted was to come into work, clock in, work her shift in peace, and then go home to drink and try to forget that she was a broke grad student in a jobless field who would probably be stuck working as store manager at her local Garreg Mach gas station for the rest of her life. But as she stared in deadened horror at the sight of Dimitri eating a slightly stepped on burger off of the floor of the station she realized that today would not be that day. 

“Hi Dimitri,” she said, choosing to ignore his current actions for the sake of her sanity. “You clocked on yet?”

He growled into his burger, which Byleth took to mean no. She shrugged and made her way to the back room, unsurprised to find Claude and Hilda crouched over her desk, watching the security cameras and live streaming it from Hilda’s phone. 

“Goodbye, instagram,” she intoned as she snatched Hilda’s phone and ended the stream. Hilda and Claude groaned and turned to face her. 

“Oh come on Professor.” Hilda pouted, her bubblegum pink hair somehow managing to bounce perfectly as she moved like some sort of real life anime girl. 

“Don’t call me that,” Byleth said, sitting down in her cracked, faux leather desk chair. “I’m your TA, not your professor.”

“Damn, Teach, no need to get testy.” Claude joked, hanging up his apron. 

“I’m not _ your _ TA, stop calling me that.” Byleth said, not paying attention to the two leaving. Instead, she was pretending to check the over 500 new emails she had received from corporate since her last shift. Policy update, customer complaint, district wide memo, customer complaint, shipping ledger, customer complaint, customer complaint, customer complaint, spam, customer complaint. Nothing new or exciting. “So why is Dimitri eating food off of the floor?” 

“I dunno,” Claude shrugged, scratching at his weird, partially shaven beard. “I just saw him walk in with it, drop it, step on it, then bend down, pick it up, and go ham.”

“I mean, food is food, especially when you have no taste buds.” Hilda said, not looking up from her phone. 

“He has taste buds, they’re just nonfunctional,” Claude explained for the fortieth time. 

“Eh, whatever.” Hilda shrugged and kept typing away, her eyes flickering back and forth as she tapped away. 

“Can you two please leave?” Byleth said, not turning to look at them. “I don’t want to get yelled at again by Seteth for going over on hours. Again.”

“You act like Seteth won’t find an excuse to yell at you anyways.” Claude said, although he did start packing up. Hilda wrestled off her apron, popping her gum as she hung it up with her free, non typing hand. The two of them ducked out of the office and Byleth watched them make their way out of the store. Groaning to herself, she started reaching her hand towards the flask she kept taped under her desk, but decided against it until she dealt with Dimitri. With a sigh, she hauled herself out of her chair, grabbed an apron, and made her way to the front counter. Dimitri was done eating, and instead was furiously scribbling away in his patent leather notebook. He looked like he was having a personal moment, so Byleth shrugged and pulled out her own phone. 

Half an hour of solitaire later, Dimitri finally seemed to notice that she had joined him. He nodded to her in greeting and she nodded back and the two of them stood in a companionable silence for a few moments before the door to the store burst open. Byleth whipped her head up and saw one of their regulars, Ferdinand, standing imperiously in the door. 

“Hello,” he called out in a far too loud and imperious voice. “I am Ferdinand von Aegir and I am here to purchase the largest condoms you have for sale!”

“Same place they always are, Ferd.” Byleth said, going back to her game. He cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly and shuffled over to the condoms, grabbing a box and a packet of Tylenol before making his way silently to the counter. Dimitri rang him out, making intense and uncomfortable eye contact with Ferdinand for the entire transaction. Ferdinand practically bolted out the door when he was finished. 

“Say hi to Hubert for me.” Byleth called at his retreating form. “And you,” she turned to Dimitri and poked his arm, hard. “Stop antagonizing the customers.” 

“I don’t like his hair.” Is all Dimitri said before going back to staring blankly at the wall. Byleth sighed and went to go start sweeping the floor. 

—

The worst part about working the night shift was the weirdos. And because it was a small college town, Byleth was unfortunately well acquainted with most of them. After eight hours of chasing away Caspar from the soda fountain with a broom (he was banned from it after attempting to drink directly from the nozzle and almost drowning himself), threatening to call the cops on Lorenz for attempting to shoplift a can of refried beans, and actually calling the cops on Leonie for threatening to ‘wear her like a body suit and get the dad she truly deserved’, she was tired and ready to go home and sleep for the four hours she had until she had to wake up for her 8am class. The only person in the store at the moment was a small, hooded figure inspecting the donuts. Weird, but whatever. 

“I’m gonna go do my paperwork,” she said to Dimitri. As she turned to go to her office, a loud crash echoed through the store. She jumped and whirled around, hand on her taser as she watched the mysterious hooded figure run out of the store, half a dozen stale donuts from the case in their arms. In a startlingly smooth movement Dimitri jumped the counter, his long legs almost blurring together as he chased the speedy thief out of the store and down the street. Byleth watched them disappear and then turned to the now broken plexiglass donut case on the floor and sighed. She _ knew _ she should have bolted that thing down. Ah well. Not her problem anymore. 

—

Byleth was on her way out of the store when Dimitri returned, agitated and almost frothing at the mouth. Edelgard looked at him scathingly from behind the register where she stood with Hubert, and Dimitri hissed at her like a twelve year old weeaboo with a Hetalia addiction. 

“Any luck?” Byleth asked, stepping between the two before another fight could break out. Dimitri snapped his head back to her and shook it angrily. 

“No. But I swear to you, I will find that thief and I will kill them and everyone involved in their heist. I will kill them all!”

“Great, good talk team.” Byleth said, clapping Dimitri on the shoulder. “Now go clock out and get some sleep. Or rest. Or haunt a graveyard. Whatever it is you do outside of here.” He grunted and stalked off and Byleth finally, finally made her way to her car. 

With a beleaguered groan she dropped herself into the driver’s seat, coaxing the ancient machine alive with prayers and too many engine revs to be safe. Once it sputtered to life she fished her phone out of her purse and checked her messages. Two from her dad, one from Shamir, twenty seven increasingly intoxicated picture messages from Manuela, and one from Seteth. Knowing he wouldn’t text her unless it was important- or a question about whatever new piece of slang Flayn was tossing around- she clicked on it. 

_ Boss Man [2:46 am]: Hello Byleth, this is Seteth. Have you decided on who you are nominating for employee of the month? Please let me know. Thanks, Seteth. _

Byleth looked at her calendar. Sure enough it was the 23rd. She let out a long, pained moan as she slammed her head back against the headrest. Fuck. 

_ Byleth [3:39 am]: Not yet. Also, I know who you are. You don’t have to remind me every time you text me. _

There went her peace and quiet over the next week. Fuck. 


	2. The 24th

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame my extremely cursed workplace and the Garreg Mach server for this.

“Sylvain?”

“Yes, Byleth?”

“Why are there plastic skeleton feet hanging from the ceiling?”

“We’re a week from Halloween! They’re there to set the mood!”

“Sylvain.”

“Yes, Byleth?”

“Take them down now or I will beat you to death with them.”

Sylvain let out a mournful groan, but started taking down his attempts at seasonal décor nonetheless. Really, it was her fault for mentioning the upcoming holiday in the group chat earlier. Ducking under a particularly low appendage, she went to go open her office door when it swung open and she ran face first in a hard wall of somewhat unwashed man flesh.

“Hello, Dimitri,” she said into his chest, “How are you today?”

“Bathroom’s haunted.” He said, patting her head before moving past her.

“I’m sorry, what?” She asked, immediately regretting having asked.

“Bathroom’s haunted.” Is all he responded, lumbering past her to go clock out.

Well, she thought, hopefully that’s the weirdest-

“I must say, I simply adore what you’ve done with the décor in here!” Lorenz crowed as he walked into the store.

Fuck.

\----

The meowing started around 3am. The store was empty, except for Byleth, who had spent the past hour watching back to back episodes of Buzzfeed Unsolved. Definitely not her brightest idea, but she was bored and approximately half of YouTube was blocked on the crappy company owned desktop and she was determined to make a comprehensive list of why it was a bad block list. For example: sasunaru AMVs and seven of the twelve parts of a nature documentary from the 80s made it through, but TED Talks and news clips were blocked.

The meowing had an odd tone to it. Perhaps it was a foreign breed? Byleth wasn’t sure, despite being a cat person herself she was half convinced that her cat, Sothis, was actually an ancient demon stuck in the seven-pound body of a narcoleptic feline, so her experience with ‘normal’ cats was limited at best. Sighing and pausing her video, she dragged herself out of her chair and grabbed her pepper spray, just in case.

Peeking out of the back door, Byleth could only blink in confusion at what she found in the back alley. Crouched on all fours behind the dumpster was Felix, who was apparently the source of the meowing. She watched with raised brows as the normally tetchy man crawled around making cat noises, still having not noticed her presence. After a few more minutes of this, she finally cleared her throat, causing the man to jump and whirl to face her.

“You okay there, Felix?” She asked, rubbing blearily at her eyes to ensure that she wasn’t seeing things.

“No,” he spat, looking simultaneously embarrassed and enraged, “Because fucking Sylvain decided to host a fucking Halloween party at our fucking apartment and he invited fucking Dimitri who got fucking high as shit and started barking like a fucking dog because he’s a fucking moron and it scared my fucking cat who ran out the door that some fuckwhit left open and I’ve been chasing his dumb ass all over fucking town and now he’s managed to get himself stuck behind this stupid! Fucking! Dumpster!” Felix finished with a roar, kicking the dumpster in question and causing a startled meow to echo from the far end of the green bin.

Byleth did her best not to think too deeply about the story she just heard, deciding instead to pull her hair back into a ponytail and crouch down next to Felix. He nodded at her and went back to calling for the cat that she could now see hiding in the far corner between the dumpster and the wall.

“I’m gonna go around,” she whispered. Felix nodded at her once more and she began to creep around the side of the dumpster until she reached the other end. Waiting until Felix was in place, Byleth pulled the dumpster forward, startling the cat towards Felix’s outstretched arms. He lunged for it, only for it to dodge at the last minute and go scaling up the rough, brick wall and onto the roof of the gas station, where it began to meow feverishly, as though its little feline brain finally processed its actions and was now regretting the consequences.

“Fuck!” Felix yelled.

\----

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Absolutely not but we don’t really have a choice, do we?”

“Hey, watch the attitude, Mr. Sassy Pants. I could let you try this yourself- hey! Steady down there!” Byleth hissed at Felix, who swayed under her weight. She was standing on his shoulders, their combined height just barely enough to lift her up so she could see onto the roof. His fingers dug into her ankles as they swayed once more, making Byleth yelp and grasp at the ledge of the roof.

“Hold me steady you stupid twink!” She hissed at him.

“I’m not a twink!” He hissed right back, his face and ears tinging pink in the yellow light of the parking lot lamps.

“Oh really?” She asked, giving him a hard look. “Because I’ve heard some stories from Ingrid about when she still lived with you and Sylvain and-”

“Uh, what’s going on here?” came a slightly slurred voice from behind them. Felix jumped, and Byleth quickly covered her head with her arms, feeling herself slip off of his shoulders. Before she could hit the ground, two arms caught her, holding her against a chest she had just gotten acquainted with earlier that day.

“Hi Dimitri,” she said, looking up at the somewhat confused man. “I heard you were at Sylvain’s party.”

“Yeah but Sylvain kicked us out so I decided to come here and say hi to my favorite boss instead of going home.” He explained, his eyes still red from alcohol and weed.

“That’s sweet, bud.” She said. “Hey, do you think you could help me out with something real quick?”

\----

Sitting on Dimitri’s shoulders was an entirely different experience than standing on Felix. For one, he was much sturdier and steadier, even intoxicated. He grasped the meat of her thighs firmly with his hands, humming to himself as she held out a can of cat food, attempting to coax Felix’s frightened cat towards her. It crept closer, sniffing interestedly at her offering.

Come on, almost there-

“Byleth?”

Byleth yelped at the sudden appearance of Ashe next to Dimitri, his face concerned as he took in the scene. Dimitri let out a choked noise as she accidentally squeezed his head between her thighs. The cat yowled and dashed back further onto the roof. She sighed.

“Sorry Dimitri. Hi Ashe. Can I help you with something?” She asked, doing her best not to look too irritated when she turned to face the sweet boy.

“Do you need help?” He asked. “I heard a cat.”

\----

Two hours and four people later, Slasher was finally back in Felix’s arms. Grumbling to himself and shooting Dimitri one last glare, Felix finally left, leaving just Dimitri and Byleth, as Ashe had left as soon as Slasher had come down.

“Witch,” Felix had grumbled, looking somewhat put out that he hadn’t been able to rescue his cat by himself.

“You gonna be okay to leave, or do you want me to drive you home once Petra gets here?” She asked the giant of a man, who was almost leaning against her, half asleep where he stood.

“A ride would be nice,” he murmured, his head dropping to rest on her own. She poked and prodded him back towards her office, where she offered him the spare blanket and pillow she kept by the desk. Dimitri hummed and settled next to her, leaning his head against her leg and falling asleep as she continued where she left off in her Buzfeed Unsolved marathon.

\----

And of course, when it was finally time to leave, she couldn’t take Dimitri home because her car wasn’t there. Fighting down a wave of pure rage, Byleth pulled out her phone to check it.

_ ExGF seriously delete this number already idiot [6:17 am]: hey I’m borrowing your car again thx _

_ _

“God dammit Shamir,” she growled, calling her dad. Dimitri, who was calling Dedue for his own ride, placed a calming hand on her shoulder.

“Dad can you come get me? Shamir stole my car again.” She said as soon as he picked up. He sighed.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shamir Fire Emblem call me please

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. That happened.


End file.
